Cleopatra had hundreds upon hundreds of servants; only two of them were dear to her, Charmian and Iras. The daughters of Macedonian aristocrats, they had been given to Cleopatra when all three were small children, to be the royal companions of the second daughter of King Ptolemy Auletes and Queen Cleopatra Tryphaena, a daughter of King Mithridates of Pontus by his queen. The same age as Cleopatra, they had been with her through all the stormy years since through Ptolemy Auletes's divorce of Cleopatra Tryphaena and the arrival of a stepmother through the banishment of Auletes through three years of exile in Memphis while the oldest daughter, Berenice, reigned with her mother, Cleopatra Tryphaena through the awful time after Cleopatra Tryphaena's death when Berenice searched frantically for a husband acceptable to the Alexandrians through the return of Ptolemy Auletes and his resumption of the throne through the day when Auletes had murdered Berenice, his own daughter through the first two years of Cleopatra's reign. So long! They were her only confidantes, so it was to them that she poured out the story of her audience with Gnaeus Pompey. "Potheinus is becoming insufferably confident," she said. "Which means," said Charmian, dark and very pretty, "that he will move to dethrone you as soon as he can." "Oh, yes. I need to journey to Memphis and sacrifice in the true way to the true Gods," Cleopatra said fretfully, "but I daren't. To leave Alexandria would be a fatal mistake." "Would it help to write for advice to Antipater at the court of King Hyrcanus?" "No use whatsoever. He's all for the Romans." "What was Gnaeus Pompeius like?" asked Iras, who always thought of personalities, never of politics. She was fair and very pretty. "In the same mold as the great Alexander. Macedonian." "Did you like him?" Iras persisted, blue eyes fondly misty. Cleopatra looked exasperated. "As a matter of fact, Iras, I disliked the man intensely! Why do you ask such silly questions? I am Pharaoh. My hymen belongs to my equal in blood and deity. If you fancy Gnaeus Pompeius, go and sleep with him. You're a young woman; you should by rights be married. But I am Pharaoh, God on Earth. When I mate, I do so for Egypt, not for my own pleasure." Her face twisted. "Believe me, for no lesser reason than Egypt will I summon the fortitude to give my untouched body to the little viper!"
5
It was with a sense of enormous relief that Pompey the Great set out at the beginning of December to march westward along the Via Egnatia all the way to Dyrrachium. Sharing the palace in Thessalonica with more than half of Rome's Senate had proven a nightmare. For they had all returned, of course, from Cato to his beloved older son, who had sailed in from Alexandria with a superb fleet of ten quinqueremes and sixty transports, the latter loaded to creaking point. Their cargo was supposed to be wheat, barley, beans and chickpea, but turned out to consist mostly of dates. Sweet and tasty for an Epicurean snack, unpalatable fare for soldiers. "That stringy she-wolf monster!" Gnaeus Pompey had snarled after he discovered that only ten of the transports held wheat; the other fifty contained dates in jars he had seen filled with wheat. "She tricked me!" His father, worn down by a combination of Cato and Cicero, chose to see the funny side, laughed himself to tears he couldn't shed any other way. "Never mind," he soothed his irate son, "after we've beaten Caesar we'll hie ourselves off to Egypt and pay for this war out of Cleopatra's treasury." "It will give me great pleasure personally to torture her!" "Tch, tch!" clucked Pompey. "Not loverlike language, Gnaeus! There's a rumor going round that you had her." "The only way I'd have her is roasted and stuffed with dates!" Which reply set Pompey laughing again.
Cato had returned just before Gnaeus Pompey, very pleased with the success of his mission to Rhodes, and full of the story of his encounter with his half sister, Servililla, divorced wife of the dead Lucullus, and her son, Marcus Licinius Lucullus. "I don't understand her any more than I do Servilia," he said frowning. "When I encountered Servililla in Athens she seemed to think she'd be proscribed if she stayed in Italia she swore never again to leave me. Sailed the Aegaean with me, came to Rhodes. Started bickering with Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus. But when it came time to leave Rhodes, she said she was staying there." "Women," said Pompey, "are queer fish, Cato. Now go away!" "Not until you agree to tighten up on discipline among the Galatian and Cappadocian cavalry. They're behaving disgracefully." "They are here to help us win against Caesar, Cato, and we do not have to pay for their upkeep. As far as I'm concerned, they are welcome to violate the female population of all Macedonia, and beat up the male population. Now go away!" Next to arrive was Cicero, accompanied by his son. Exhausted, miserable, full of complaints about everyone from his brother and nephew, the Quintuses, to Atticus, who refused to speak out against Caesar and was busy smoothing Caesar's path in Rome. "I was surrounded by traitors!" he fulminated to Pompey, his poor oozing eyes red and crusted. "It took months to manage my escape, and then I had to leave without Tiro." "Yes, yes," said Pompey wearily. "There's a marvelous wisewoman lives outside the Larissa gate, Cicero. Go and see her about those eyes. Now! Please!" In October came Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius from Spain, the harbingers of their own doom. With them they brought a few cohorts of troops, which was no consolation to Pompey, shattered by the news that his Spanish army was no more and that Caesar had won another almost bloodless victory. To make matters worse, the advent of Afranius and Petreius provoked a frenzied fury in men like Lentulus Crus, returned from Asia Province. "They're traitors!" Lentulus Crus yelled in Pompey's ear. "I demand that our Senate try them and condemn them!" "Oh, shut up, Crus!" said Titus Labienus. "At least Afranius and Petreius know their way around a battlefield, which is more than anyone can say of you." "Magnus, who is this lowborn worm?" gasped Lentulus Crus, outraged. "Why do we have to tolerate him? Why do I, a patrician Cornelius, have to be insulted by men who aren't fit to polish my boots? Tell him to take himself off!" "Take yourself off, Lentulus!" said Pompey, close to tears. Those tears finally overflowed at night upon his pillow after Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus sailed in with the news that Massilia had capitulated to Caesar, and that Caesar was in complete control of every land to the west of Italia. "However," said Ahenobarbus, "I have a good little flotilla, and I intend to make use of it."
Bibulus journeyed late in December to find Pompey as his huge army plodded across the high passes of Candavia. "Ought you to be here?" asked Pompey nervously. "Calm down, Magnus! Caesar won't be landing in Epirus or Macedonia in the near future," said Bibulus comfortably. "For one thing, there aren't anything like enough transports in Brundisium for Caesar to get his troops across the Adriatic. For another, I have your son's fleet in the Adriatic as well as my own two under Octavius and Libo, and Ahenobarbus patrolling the Ionian Sea." "You know, of course, that Caesar has been appointed Dictator and that the whole of Italia is for him? And that he hasn't any intention of proscribing?" "I do. But cheer up, Magnus, it isn't all bad. I've sent Gaius Cassius and those seventy trim Syrian ships to the Tuscan Sea with orders to patrol it between Messana and Vibo and block all shipments of grain from Sicily. His presence will also prevent Caesar's sending any of his troops to Epirus from the west coast." "Oh, that is good news!" cried Pompey. "I think so." Bibulus smiled the restrained smile of real satisfaction. "If we can pen him up in Brundisium, can you imagine how Italia will feel if the countryside has to feed twelve legions through the winter? After Gaius Cassius gets through with the grain supply, Caesar will have enough trouble feeding the civilian populace. And we hold Africa, don't forget." "That's true." Pompey lapsed back into gloom. "However, Bibulus, I'd be a far happier man if I'd received those two Syrian legions from Metellus Scipio before I left Thessalonica. I'm going to need them when and if Caesar manages to get across. Eight of his legions are completely veteran." "What prevented the Syrian legions reaching you?" "According to Scipio's latest letter, he's having terrible trouble forcing the Amanus. The Skenite Arabs have taken up residence in the passes and they're obliging him to fight every inch of the way. Well, you know the Amanus, you campaigned there." Bibulus frowned. "Then he still has to march the entire length of Anatolia before he reaches the Hellespont. I doubt you'll see
Scipio before spring." "So let us hope, Bibulus, that we don't see Caesar either." A vain hope. Pompey was still in Candavia negotiating the heights north of Lake Ochris when Lucius Vibullius Rufus located him fairly early in January. "What are you doing here?" asked Pompey, astonished. "We thought you in Nearer Spain!" "I'm the first evidence of what happens to a man who, having been pardoned by Caesar after Corfinium goes off and opposes him again. He took me prisoner after Illerda, and he's kept me with him ever since." Pompey could feel himself go pale. "You mean ?" "Yes, I mean Caesar loaded four legions into every transport he could find and sailed from Brundisium the day before the Nones." Vibullius smiled mirthlessly. "He never even saw a single warship and landed safely on the coast at Palaestae." "Palaestae?" "Between Oricum and Corcyra. The first thing he did was to send me to see Bibulus on Corcyra to inform him that he'd missed his chance. And to ask for your whereabouts. You see in me Caesar the Dictator's ambassador." "Ye Gods, he has hide! Four legions? That's all?" "That's all." "What's his message?" "That enough Roman blood has been spilled. That now's the time to discuss the terms of a settlement. Both sides, he says, are evenly matched but uncommitted." "Evenly matched," said Pompey slowly. "Four legions!" "They're his words, Magnus." "And his terms?" "That you and he apply to the Senate and People of Rome to set the terms. After you and he have dismissed your armies. That he requires within three days of my return to him." "The Senate and People of Rome. His Senate. His People," said Pompey between his teeth. "He's been elected senior consul, he's no longer Dictator. Everyone in Rome and Italia deems him a wonder. Certainly no Sulla!" "Yes, he rules through fair words, not foul means. Oh, he is clever! And all those fools in Rome and Italia fall for it." "Well, Vibullius, he's the hero of the hour. Ten years ago, I was the hero of the hour. There are fashions in public heroes too. Ten years ago, the Picentine prodigy. Today, the patrician prince." Pompey's manner changed. "Tell me, whom did he leave in charge at Brundisium?" "Marcus Antonius and Quintus Fufius Calenus." "So he has no cavalry with him in Epirus." "Very little. Two or three squadrons of Gauls." "He'll be making for Dyrrachium." "Undoubtedly." "Then I'd better summon my legates and start this army moving at the double. I have to beat him to Dyrrachium or he'll inherit my camp and access to Dyrrachium itself." Vibullius stood up, taking this as a dismissal. "What about an answer to Caesar?" "Let him whistle!" said Pompey. "Stay here and be useful."
5. Caesar Page 70
